Self-Expression
by Dragon Elexus
Summary: After thousands of years guarding and caring for the humans in Pink Diamond's zoo, the Fam thought they knew everything about the species. A group of three Earth teenagers prove them wrong.


**Self-Expression**

For the quartzes stationed at Pink Diamond's Zoo, life hadn't been that bad. Really.

Sure, it'd been dull. Nothing to do most of the time except patrol the same empty hallways, keeping them clean for visitors that never came. The humans generally looked after themselves, barring the occasional incident. Sometimes a few Quartzes had to help clean up the enclosure, and when breeding season came around, they'd rear the infants until they were big enough to talk, but that never lasted long.

Yes, Holly Blue would whip the Quartzes if they couldn't perform to her exacting standards, but that was to be expected of an Agate.

And yeah, they sometimes wondered what it would be like to see any other planet. Stars, any other space station.

But they'd been better off than any other batch of Quartzes in the universe. The Zoo Crew might have been bored, but they were safe, and not out risking shattering on the frontlines every day.

None of them had ever forgotten what the War had been like.

None of them forgot there was likely another one looming on the horizon.

None of the Amethysts or Jaspers or Carnelian mentioned that to their new human friends. In their experience, humans were easily startled. It'd be a bad idea to upset them.

But this strategy didn't seem to entirely work.

"Yikes. That was your whole life?" asked Sour Cream. He's frowning, and so were the other humans, Jenny and Buck.

Better backpedal before this became a tear-fest.

"Nah," said 8XJ quickly. "We got to spend a lot of downtime in our cubbies!"

"Cubbies?" asked Jenny.

At the description Jasper 9NQ gave, Buck just shook his head. "They stuffed you into literal boxes. Uncool.

'Cool' did not refer to temperature, but the goodness of something. 'Hot' also meant something was good. Human metaphors were baffling.

"Uhhh, they weren't _boxes,_ " Amethyst 8XB, (who 8XM had nicknamed 'Thunder' a couple days after arrived on Earth). "They were holes shaped like us—"

"Cookie cutter shapes," said Buck with a wave of his hand.

The Quartzes all looked at each other in bafflement.

Carnelian stuck up her hand. "Uh, what does that mean?"

"It means," said Jenny, "that it's time to self-express."

Self-expression was a foreign concept, but not one the Quartzes were wholly unfamiliar with. They were all Amethysts and Jaspers (and one Carnelian), but they weren't the same person. Obviously. In their thousands of years together, they'd fostered their own little quirks. Amethyst 8XG's favourite form of attack was noogies, Amethyst 9WK liked to pull pranks, Jasper 2EM loved back-rubs…

Earth humans, they'd all been discovering, took this all a step further.

Names were a crucial element, apparently. Humans, like Gems, were assigned names at creation. However, these were assigned according to their creators' preferences, and the nomenclature systems seemed varied and was extremely complicated.

"You can shorten your name," said Jenny. "My full name is Jennifer Sedinam Pizza, but even the first part of that is a mouthful, sooo..."

"Or you can pick a nickname," said Sour Cream.

"Or if you want, you can legally change your name to something entirely different," said Buck.

The Gems knew about giving yourself informal names for identification— they had Skinny and Chip. But those names made sense. Skinny was tall and thin for a Jasper, and Chip had a chip in her teeth no matter how many times she reformed. Human-style nicknames liked to compare things to other things— like how Amethyst 8XM had named 'Thunder' for being loud and 'Sharky' for having teeth like an Earth animal. But 'Sour Cream' apparently had no relation to anything, being neither sour nor creamy.

It all seemed very complicated. And daunting. While a few of the Quartzes picked names then and there, based on stuff on Earth they'd learned liked ('Grass' and 'Fridge' and 'Groundhog Day'), others thought this all seemed too overwhelming and had no idea what to pick.

"Don't worry," assured Buck. "Just wait until you find something that _feels_ right. And you can always switch to something else if you want."

Then there was personal appearance.

Humans couldn't shapeshift. Their forms gradually changed over the course of their lives, but otherwise, they were stuck with what they got.

Not these humans. Jenny in particular knew hundreds of way to alter physical forms. Colourful clothing— shirts, hats, pants, tops, sweaters, scarves. A lot of it was too small for most of the Quartzes, but she took them to a 'thrift shop'. A few joyous hours spent among the racks, and almost everyone came away with something fun and pretty to wear. Make-up was nice too. Bright red lips, sparkles on their eyes, dark eyelashes… It was ridiculous and wonderful. Finally was hair. Put it up, tie it into elaborate patterns, hold it in place with scrunchies and pins and gels. There were dyes, too. The quartzes could have any colour of hair they wanted. _Any_ colour.

"8XM is going to love this," said Chip, admiring the streaks of yellow and green in her hair.

"Maybe she won't even recognise us!" added Jasper 9NQ, to a chorus of laughter.

The entire Fam not only loved the little Amethyst who had named them— they _admired_ her. The stories she'd told them of the planet Earth, of the freedom she'd had for her entire life, of the respect she'd been given by the Crystal Gems… it had filled them all up. The image of her tying Holly Blue up in her own whip had blazed in their minds, and inspired them into a rebellion of their own. It had driven them to escape.

They wanted to be like Amethyst 8XM, and they all wanted her to know it.

Jasper 9VL was one of the few quartzes not caught up in the flurry of excitement. She stood at the edge of the pack, gnawing her lip.

"Something wrong?" Buck the human asked.

Jerkily, Jasper nodded.

Buck nodded too, but didn't say anything else, as if everything had been explained.

It hadn't, though, not even to Jasper 9VL herself, and she struggled to put it into words. "I've looked this way my whole life," she muttered, trading the pattern of her uniform. "I dunno if I want to change.

Another nod from Buck. "You're comfortable with who you are. I dig it. Besides. True self-expression isn't changing yourself. It's changing _others_."

"…How?" Jasper asked, an image of a group of humans descending on a group of Homeworld Gems and giving them haircuts.

"With art."

Humans had so many kinds of art. Painting, sculpture, drawing, dance, writing, film, video games…

"And the best kind," Buck said.

"Which is?" began Jasper.

As if on queue, Sour Cream appeared to say: "Music."

Oh, sure, the quartzes remembered music. Singing odes to the Diamonds' glory, chanting before a battle, victory cries when they won…

"That was a long time ago, though," said Jasper 9VL (aka 'Volkswagen Beetle').

"What? You weren't allowed to sing in your Zoo?" said Jenny, hands on hips.

"Holly Blue wouldn't let us," said Carnelian.

"Wow. And I thought Yellowdad was harsh," muttered Sour Cream.

"It wasn't entirely her fault, though," said Amethyst 8XJ, a rare bit of defence for their Agate defender. "She said it was an empire-wide law, clamping down on who was allowed to perform. Said it was distracting."

"HB said that if we'd been more focused, maybe we would have been able to save our Diamond," said Jasper 4QR.

Skinny rolled her eyes. "As if. None of us were even assigned to guard her when it happened…"

"Wow," said Jenny. "We've got an honest-to-goodness _Footloose_ situation going on here. I can't believe it."

"What's a footloose?" asked three of the quartzes at once.

"What're you doing?" asked another handful of them to Buck, who was fishing a communication device from his pocket.

"Calling a friend,' said Buck. "You guys are gonna get a private concert from _Sadie Killer and the Suspects_."

 **oOo**

 **AN:** My entry for the not-so-secret V-Day crack fic exchange for auratusuniverse


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